Important Notice

Shanti Dave's journey as an abstract artist began in 1950 at the then-nascent Faculty of Fine Arts, M S University, Baroda, where experimentation was greatly endorsed as the institution strove to design new modes of training in fine arts, free from the established manners of academic practice. Brought up in the quaint village of Bhatpur in Gujarat, Dave grew up with a close bond with nature and learned to sustain his practice with limited means,... Shanti Dave's journey as an abstract artist began in 1950 at the then-nascent Faculty of Fine Arts, M S University, Baroda, where experimentation was greatly endorsed as the institution strove to design new modes of training in fine arts, free from the established manners of academic practice. Brought up in the quaint village of Bhatpur in Gujarat, Dave grew up with a close bond with nature and learned to sustain his practice with limited means, which meant that he often ventured into ways of seeking economic materials. For instance, he used a homemade gesso to prime a jute surface for painting and also made his own crayons by dissolving charcoal into water and kneading into chalks. His initial fondness for calligraphy, fuelled by an active imagination, took him down the path of becoming a signboard artist before he took on formal training in Baroda.

With N S Bendre, Sankho Chaudhuri, and K G Subramanyan as his guides, Dave worked tirelessly to transform his imagery into a robust style of abstraction. His works in the late 1950s were informed by the memories of his village and its environment which he expressed through a sensitive application of colour. They "are permeated with village atmosphere. To be sure it was not an attempt at romanticising the village or to make a social comment." (Ratan Parimoo, "Recent Paintings of Shanti Dave (Homage to the Wall)", Asia Art Archive, circa 1965, p. 1) As seen in lot 18, these works illuminated faint suggestions to rural life by means of figures that are telling of his familiarity with the works of his teachers, particularly N S Bendre. His artistic ability can be observed in the ambiguously detailed figures, composed of criss-cross brushstrokes, scratching, hatching with a palette knife, and charged with spontaneity. "These paintings are like walls where paint is handled as brutally and with as much assuredness as mortar is used by a mortar-mason." (Parimoo, p. 3)

Progressing into the '60s, his work grew towards spatial experiments including a fraction of his exploration in calligraphy which was directed towards an inquiry into the symbolism of script. Layering his canvas with paint and populating them with embossed letters, his compositions saw an intriguing interplay of an invented and illegible script with dynamic forms and colours, as seen in lot 20.

Dave bore great zeal for experimenting with mediums and materials, often inventing ways of creating his own because materials, such as beeswax, weren't available in the Indian market or were otherwise expensive. Subramanyan, who he fondly referred to as guru, recalls how "Shanti went out of his way to gain information about materials and methods and tried them on. I remember he experimented with various surfaces and media. He ground mineral colours like indigenous artists. He even tried to make drawing crayons to use in the place of conte crayons that were then hard to get."(K G Subramanyan, "Interview of K G Subramanyan by Tripat K.", Asia Art Archive, circa 2000, p. 3) He further notes that Dave was one of the first Baroda artists to take the bold step of moving to Delhi to become a full-time artist and also travelled around the globe as much as established artists of the time.

Dave's work received due support and recognition in the form of awards such as a two-year cultural scholarship from the Government of India from 1957 to 1959, the Lalit Kala Akademi award in 1958, and the Lalit Kala Ratna Puraskar by the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, in 2004. His rigorous exercises in exploring and practising with unconventional mediums materialised into mastering encaustic painting, a technique that involves painting with hot coloured wax. The present lot is one such effortless execution that blends the techniques of encaustic and oil painting as well as pen and ink in the same picture plane. The overwhelming scale makes it an exceptional demonstration of Dave's vigour and knowledge of materials that drove his practice.

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